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Subject:Re: Large Vintage Chinese Teapot - Decoration
Posted By: Bill H Thu, Jun 22, 2017
I was in Taiwan 40 years ago, at a time when everyone seemed to own one of these teapots and bragged about how much they were worth on the USA Mainland at that time. Before I departed Taiwan, I drove down-island to Kaohsiung to a shop that specialized in Kinmen ceramics, where I bought the one teapot, as well as a moonflask in a Ming Yongle pattern for what I think came to an NT$ total worth about US$200. The auction link herewith shows a teapot like ours, which the description calls a "Taiwan Matsu" pot, though it has the Kinmen mark. This piece sold in the U.S. auction last year for $150 against an estimate of $200-400.
I also have a pair of similar teapots with Kinmen marks that differ from what's on either of our pots. Both pots, which apparently are made of crackle glaze stoneware, were bought at a local estate sale a couple of years ago for about $40 apiece (one has a hairline around the base of the joint at one end of its handle).
I'm sure the hard-paste porcelain pots were worth a lot more Stateside than I paid in 1977 in Taiwan, because the Kinmen kiln was said at the time to be supplying museums around the world with authorized reproduction porcelains copied from the Taipei Palace Museum collection. I didn't have the internet to find out if this was true or not, but it mattered little a year later, when Mainland China and the USA normalized relations. In short order, Kinmen had massive competition for repro porcelains of all kinds. Still, the crackle-glazed version doesn't begin to compare with the looks of the hard-paste pot unless you stand back and squint from about 20 or 30 feet. In my opinion, you still have one of the better museum-quality repros in the world if your teapot is hard-paste and not the crackle-glaze.
Best regards,
Bill H.
URL Title :Kinmen Teapot
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